


to you then I came burning

by maybetwice



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Character Death Fix, F/F, Fix-It, Post-Canon, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 15:22:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18897349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/maybetwice
Summary: A dragon on the horizon is a fearful sight, especially now.





	to you then I came burning

**Author's Note:**

> Title from T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land"

It is young Brodie who sees the dragon on the horizon and raises the alarm in the keep below, but Lord Yohn is the one who comes to Sansa’s chamber to tell her the news. She hesitates just long enough for ink to drop in a single pearl from her quill, and then she sets it to the side with a rueful look at the ruined parchment. 

“Show me.” 

By the time she arrives on the ramparts, the winged shape is near enough that Sansa can make out the faint red between its onyx scales and recognizes it as Daenerys’s favorite. The one that left King’s Landing with the dead queen’s body. The one no one thought of again, although a lone dragon roaming the continent is a dreadful thought.

Now, here is Drogon, a problem for the North to solve.

“The dragon is slowing,” Brodie explains in a trembling voice, plainly terrified by all the same fearful scenarios Sansa has just imagined on her own. “I don’t believe it intends to bypass us.” 

“Alert the garrison commander to prepare the archers,” Sansa orders without moving from her place at the walls, only betraying her own nerves by gripping the stone with her gloved hand. Archers, as if that could stop a dragon that leveled a city. Fleetingly, she wishes that Arya or Jon were here, because they would have some idea how to slay a dragon, but Sansa will have to do this alone.

Drogon’s wings shift and his massive body dips from the blue, close enough now to see the doll-like figure clutched in his enormous claws. 

Sansa feels a wave of nausea at the realization that the grieving dragon has come here, has brought the remains of its only mother here. Beside her, one of the archers lifts his crossbow and takes aim, awaiting her command to fire. Sansa needs to give the order. A well-placed bolt might rupture one of the sacs near his belly and kill it the way the Night King killed its sibling. If they are very lucky, they may not take any casualties at all. Again, Drogon drops lower and Sansa waits, hoping for the right time to give the order that may protect what remains of her men.

She is about to do so when she can make out the feathery tufts framing the beast’s head, but then he opens his maw and releases a long, mournful note, a song unlike anything Sansa has ever heard. 

“Wait,” she breathes, heart hammering in her chest as Drogon lands just beyond the gates of Winterfell, where the earth is scorched from dozens of mass funeral pyre. His song fills the air, deep and haunting, but the dragon rests his head on the burnt ground and nudges the limp, pale figure before him. 

Sansa freezes in place, or she thinks she does, but her body moves woodenly on its own, leaving the walls of Winterfell behind and descending to the ground level of the keep. The command to open the gate sounds thin and hollow to her ears, but the soldiers scramble to do so as if it were a sharp bellow. No one even seems to think of questioning her, except for Sansa herself as she strides past the protection of her own walls and into the snowswept tundra. 

Drogon is frightening and large, even more so when he screams at her when she approaches. Sansa trembles a little then, reminding herself of her own bravery, but the dragon does not move toward her, or even do more than hunch protectively over Daenerys’s body.

The creature’s eyes are foreign and unknowable to her, but still, she thinks she can sense some intense emotion, some bizarre kinship with this beast. A longing, a grief that resounds with the same notes of her own losses.

“She’s dead,” Sansa tells him in a soft voice, not even sure that the dragon can hear her, or even if he cares to understand.

A screeching roar deafens her, the force of the sound blowing at her cloak, but Sansa takes only a step back, holding up her hand to stop the group of soldiers who have run after their queen. They mean well, but she fears that if they draw their swords and spears, they will all be reduced to ash before the dragon could be slain. But perhaps Drogon does understand her, and is revolting against the idea that Daenerys is dead.

Sansa knows that sort of grief. And what would she have wanted? Her brother died hoping to bring their father’s bones home to Winterfell, to lay them to rest. Now that the wars are over, there are many that were never honored with funeral rites, with the cleansing of fire and the interment of bones. 

All that she has done, the sum of her life’s work, even Sansa is certain Daenerys has earned that.

“I could take her body,” offers Sansa in a conciliatory tone, holding up her hands to demonstrate her helplessness as she approaches again. “I will send for a Septon, to administer the rites of her faith. There is – there is a beautiful copse of trees in our godswood where she would rest peacefully.”

A dragon. She is trying to negotiate with a dragon. The folly of it is not lost on Sansa, particularly as Drogon huffs steam hot enough to singe the ends of her hair. She decides to retreat, has already started turning away when Drogon sings his melodious song again and pulls back, nudging Daenerys’s body in Sansa’s direction one last time.

And there, in the softest, faintest stirring of expression on Daenerys’s limp face, Sansa understands what brought Drogon to Winterfell.

Daenerys lives.


End file.
